


Devotion and Desire.

by Nameha



Series: Set My Heart Ablaze in The Land of Fire [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, Fluff, Gentleness, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Near Death Experiences, War Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 14:56:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19814662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nameha/pseuds/Nameha
Summary: After awakening the Mangekyo in his grief, Kagami cannot leave Tobirama to die after facing the Kinkaku unit alone. He vows to bring them home together.





	Devotion and Desire.

**Author's Note:**

> Companion piece for One more soul to the call.

Twigs snapped under foot as Kagami lagged behind his team. Blunt nails cut crescents, reminiscent of the moon, into his left palm. The night life of the forest, all static, white noise to his inner turmoil.

Even high in the trees the moon's light, weak as it was, casted long shadows dancing across the tree tops.

An omen, Kagami thought. A waning moon on the night of battle was a sign of misfortune, according to Uchiha superstitions. Oh, and how misfortunate they had been.

Tobirama had gone, willingly, into the dark.

The humidity caused his curls to cling to his forehead, skin glistening with sweat, as he ran. Clutching the happuri, closely, to his chest. The metal making shallow grooves in his fingers.

His jaw tightened, heart lurching at the memory of how it came into his possession.  
\---  
"For my brother." Tobirama outstretched his hand to Kagami. Face solemn as he looked upon his disciples for the last time. The others hesitated as their gaze flickered from their Sensei to Kagami.

The corners of Kagami's mouth pinched, warping his face into a frown. Tobirama had no intention of coming back, to them, to him.

Not alive anyways.

Kagami wanted to argue, urge him to come with them, there had to be another way. But the argument was caught, burning like a failed katon, in his throat. He swallowed his protests.

He took the happuri from Tobirama, ghosting trembling fingers over Tobirama. Gripping it tightly, pulling it to his chest like a life line, resiting the urge to trace the symbol.

He looked up, meeting Tobirama's eyes, he fought back the instinct to activate his sharingan. To sear Tobirama's face into his memory, for the final time.

He had to be strong, he was a shinobi, he was an Uchiha.

But the sensation of pins and needles gathering in the backs of his eyes would only serve to betray him. The world was starting to swim, out of focus, as a film settled over his vision. 

He steeled himself.

He didn't supress the sick churn of chakra, how it burned and flared within him, a whirlpool on fire; A turbulence of emotion. Knowing Tobirama could feel it, a silent plea to stay.

The knife of anguish, the agony of his devotion.

But Tobirama tore his gaze away and turned his back to his team.

Marching to his death, Kagami thought bitterly.

"Go" Tobirama had ordered, and so they went.  
\---  
He would never see him again. The thought struck him, stealing the oxygen from his tired lungs.

No, he would see him, when Hashirama sent a team to retrieve his body.

The thought was unbearable. Misery rising in his chest, nausea coiling in his gut, all teeth and claws.

He didn't want to go on without him.

He blinked back the tears forming, damning himself, he was no match for the enemy, not like this; weak from chakra overuse and battle. 

He rubbed at his eyes, digging the palms of his hands into them to stave off the impending torrent of grief.

Yes, he knew of Tobirama's legacy of blood. Tobirama had decimated battle fields and claimed countless lives of his own clan. But that was in the past, it was not who he was, just a facade, a fleeting ghost was not the flesh and blood of his Tobirama. 

He was not the cold, calloused, monster that the village and his bloodline claimed him to be.

No, Tobirama wasn't what he was potrayed as, not to Kagami. Kagami saw past the gore and into his soul. Behind the frightening intelligence, carefully crafted stoicism and into the plunging depths. Underneath the underneath, Tobirama was vast like the ocean swell of his chakra; even the darkest parts harbored the most spectacular life.

The admiration and awe had transformed, overtime, into an insatiable devotion, a desire, a love that became Kagami's core. 

He could not give up on what he loved.

Suddenly, without warning, an intense pressure built behind his eyes. A severe, searing, wave of chakra collided with his optic nerves.

He cried out as he squeezed his eyes shut.

Missing the branch and tumbling into the clearing his team landed in.

The ground rose up to catch him, hitting earth, the air was forcibly expelled from his lungs. Gasping as the jagged rocks grazed his face, drawing blood as they embedded themselves into soft flesh.

The forehead protector sprawling through the grass.

He scrambled for it, searching in the dark, until his hand curled around it. 

Bringing the cool metal to his forehead to ground himself.

Dragging himself to his knees, one hand clawing at his face, willing back the throbbing, flames licking at his eyes.

Chest heaving as he took stuttering breathes.

His team had stopped.

"Enough, Kagami! Pull yourself together!" Danzo seethed from a distance.

"We need to go! Now!" That was Koharu, her normally even voice, hitting a shrill note.

"I can't. I can't go on..." He whispered.

"You can and will! Sensei ordered us back! There's nothing we can do!" Hiruzen yelled.

Kagami rose to his feet, eyes still blind to the world. When he opened them...

His breath hitched, it was like seeing his world for the first time. 

The moon was piercingly bright; A sun in the middle of the night, brilliantly penetrating the inky gloom. 

Illuminating his surroundings, the overlapping hues of the sky, indigo and cobalt burned above. Exquisite azure strings wove through the expanse, pulling clusters of gold along the horizon line.

He marvelled at the majesty of color. He couldn't recall the sky being anything other then a stark void.

A sail of silverly clouds rippled, refracting the moon's rays. Bringing him otherworldly clarity. Sharpening the edges of large trees, the fine, intricate, details of the leaves stood, vibrantly, against the whorls of dark wood. 

He gazed up at the stars, in awe.

When had they come out?

The swirling vortex of cosmic light, white, yellow, and distant cyan fires, setting the sky ablaze. Heat leaking from his eyes coloring his perception even the red tinge of his vision did not detract from the vibrancy of his sight.

He felt the untapped reserve of chakra course through his veins, flooding him with a raw power that was like nothing he thought possible.

His sharingan had evolved, the mangekyo, mirroring his heart. Bestowing upon him a formidable potential that would rival even Madara Uchiha.

With the inheritance of his bloodline limit he could see everything. No detail, no matter how minuscule, could escape his gaze. With these eyes, his newfound visual prowness, he could be strong. Not the enemy nor his teammates could stand against him, as he was, now.

He turned his eyes on his teammates.

"Go back to the village."

"You can't--"

Kagami raised a hand, effectively silencing them. Boring into the depths of his teammates minds, they stilled...

Eyes glazing over, taking on the same quality as his, mirroring the red glow that enamnated from under his lashes, reflecting the mangekyo's pattern.

A water lily.

He could see the edge of Hiruzen's eye twitch, Koharu's mouth twisting down and Danzo's eyebrows pinching. 

Resistence was futile, Kagami knew this, there was no escape. Kagami sighed but he would not relent, steadfast in his resolve.

"There...is no way to fight this genjutsu. I'm sorry...It's for the best."

Their faces were pliant, slack, as he spoke.

"Tobirama Sensei was the decoy. He ordered me to double back, finish the enemy. Inform the Hokage of our expected return."

They stared at him, through him, unseeingily, as their memory deconstructed, reforming to comply with Kagami's version of events.

"Now, go!"

The team nodded, once, before they were gone.

Kagami turned back, towards the jaws of the abyss, the forest.

He ran, dodging and dipping through the low hanging branches. Rapidly approaching a cluster of chakra signatures.

He dropped into the center of the circle, body low, eyes alight as he flickered over the faces, they had pulled out their weapons intending to dispatch him quickly. He met their eyes. They halted hands trembling, twitching, on their kunai. Unable to move under his visual prowness.

Kagami stood above them, the moon a grinning backdrop, shadows consuming all but the glare of his eyes.

"Kill yourselves." Kagami ordered with a wide sweep of his hand.

His command was absolute.

In one fluid motion the unit had drove their kunai into their throats, spraying blood on the surrounding foliage. 

Kagami did not avert his gaze, intending to see the light depart from each of their eyes, as they sank to the ground. The carnage etching into his retinas.

"You came too late, Uchiha." The mocking voice of Ginkaku floated on the wind.

"Your Sensei is already dead, choked on his own blood." Kinkaku laughed.

"No...you're lying." Kagami's eyes close briefly, moving rapidly under the lids. Searching, feeling, for a spark in the dark.

Ah, there it is, a ripple in the fabric, the slow ebbing flow of deep, glacial, water. It's there, if only barely. It's enough for him.

"I feel him...I see him." Kagami hissed. Eyes snapping Mangekyo pattern spinning, drawing a kunai up to his chin, ready to strike. He intended to finish this.

"Do you think you can defeat us? Even the famed Senju Ghost fell to our hands. Your eyes can't see shit."

"The opportunity to take out Tobirama as well as an Uchiha? This is a good night."

Kagami glared, mangekyo flickering between the brothers. Red lines following his eyes as he shifted his gaze.

"We'll take you out quick! No point in toying with a brat like you!" Ginkaku barked.

Kinkaku and Ginkaku shrieked with laughter as the nine tails cloak enveloped them in bubbling corrosive chakra.

"It won't be me or Sensei, going to the grave tonight." Kagami focuses his chakra, a heavy presence building around him, fueled by incomprehensible affection. Encasing him in a swarth of navy, a monsterous giant's ribs curling around him.

The brothers roared as they attacked, clawing at the rapidly forming armor of chakra.

"Foolish brat!" Kinkaku roared as he slammed a fist into the chest of the Susanno.

"Did you know...only two powers on Earth can subdue a tailed beast? The Hokages wood style and..." Kagami weaved hand signs in rapid succession.

"The Uchiha's own visual prowness!"

Kagami reared back, eyes burning with power as the Susanno unleashed a fire storm of chakra. Black, stygian, water erupting from the Susanno's gaping mouth. Rushing towards the brothers, a tidal wave, striking Kinkaku as he fell to the hypnotic effect of Kagami's eyes.

Severing Kinkaku's body in two as Ginkaku sustained fatal burns from the water's edge, the liquid flames acting as napalm. Seeping through the nine tails cloak, slowly consuming his body.

"Why go so far for him! A demon that despises your kind!" Ginkaku spat, his charred body heaving. Disfigured face distorting in disgust.

Kagami slumped to the ground, breathing heavily as the Susanno collapsed. Left eye leaking blood, he palmed it away, smearing it across his cheek much akin to Tobirama's markings.

"Someone like you....could never understand these feelings..." Kagami ghosted his fingers along the happuri on his hip, tracing the leaf symbol tenderly.

Ginkaku laughed, a throaty rasp, as he choked.

"So...It's like that...is it...?"

Kagami stands, walking a few paces to his quarry, towering over him. Gathering chakra for the killing blow, he nodds acknowledging Ginkaku's inquiry.

"It is...and more, so much more...When he hurts so do I. He's my most precious person."

Kagami incinerated the evidence of his encounter, their ashes swirling as dust beneath his feet. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. They deserved as much.  
\---  
He could see through light filtering in from the holes in the canopy he was close.

He came upon the body, throwing himself down, knees hitting the dirt as he slid. Renewed panic swelled in his chest. Tobirama laid motionless in the dirt. Blood soaking into the earth beneath him, pooling around his head like a halo. 

Kagami could feel the hot tears spilling over landing on Tobirama's cheeks, cupped his face, drawing small circles over the red markings.

"Oh... Sensei...what have they done to you?" His voice cracks as he whispers, mangekyo taking in Tobirama's face in excruciating detail. It set his teeth on edge, taking only comfort in the minut rise and fall of Tobirama's chest. He was still here, still with him.

He smooths back Tobirama's blood crusted hair, the gore and sweat making it brittle beneath his trembling fingers.

He could not religuish Tobirama so easily, everything an Uchiha had to let go of had claw marks on it. Not a curse of hatred, but a byproduct of intense affection that manifested itself into a near crippling inability to part from such a love.

“P-please, open your eyes. I know you’re…I know you’re still here.” Kagami pleads with him, looping an arm around Tobirama's stiff neck and pulling him close. 

Putting his chin against Tobirama's head, he rocks him, gently in unsteady arms. One hand still against a feverish cheek, flush with the hot skin as he continued to stroke the bruising flesh.

"Please...please come back to me...I still need you, your brother too...the village, everything you built and everyone...you love is there..." Kagami's throat tightens with each exhale.

"I-I...know you think...I know why...you did this...but it's not over..."

Love breeds scarifice. Kagami knew this, Tobirama loved, loved truly and deeply and he was willing to die for that love. A love that no one in the village could understand, hidden under years of silence, always far from preying eyes and under the shadow of the leaf.

But Kagami loved just as completely. Loved a man that was regarded as a ghost of an era of war, a man that was compelled to die for redemption in the eyes of those who did not cherish him.

Kagami cherished him, all of him. His soft smiles, the mischievous gleam that came to his eyes when he thought of something especially clever, his quick wit and silver tongue, his lethal grace as a shinobi and the playfulness that anyone could see if they saw him, if they truly saw him.

There was nothing that Kagami took for granted of the Senju. The heartache was verging on unbearable, Now death wanted him for itself.

But Death would not have it's way.

Tobirama's eyes fluttered open, the reds of their eyes meet.

“T-There you are!” Kagami beamed, feeling his lips stretch into a wide smile. His heart pounding in his ears as he gazes upon Tobirama's face. Relieved tears escaping.

The way Tobirama's breath stutters, ah, his sharingan was still active.

Kagami respected Tobirama's learned apprehension of his bloodline limit. A fear leftover from a lifetime of war was easily forgiven.

Kagami blinks, his eyes bleeding back to black. He laughs, a small nervous sound, thanking his patron goddness, Amaterasu, for her mercy. 

He was eternally grateful to her for pulling Tobirama from the brink. He breaks down into grateful sobs.

Kagami rubs his eyes as the tears escape, hitting the corners of Tobirama’s own, trickling down. He wipes the corners of Tobirama's eyes tenderly.

“Kagami. You….should not have…come back.” Tobirama croaked, flecks of blood flaking off his cracked lips.

“I couldn’t leave you..." Kagami whispers the truth.

Tobirama's lip curls in displeasure. Kagami's eyebrows pinch, as he bites the inside of his cheek, his insides squirming at the display.

"I won’t make it. You came back for a corpse!” Tobirama hisses and Kagami can't control himself.

He wouldn't let Tobirama kill himself, not for the village, not for anyone.

“Don’t say that! You’re not going to die! I won’t accept that!”

Kagami stamps his fist into the dirt, small rocks tearing at his knuckles, kicking up a cloud of dust, eyes starting to prickle with a familiar burn.

“What does it matter, Kagami, What’s one more soul to the call?”

No, Kagami thinks, not you. He wants to cry, make Tobirama understand. He's more then a body to feed the war machine, he's more then just another life laid down in the name of peace. Wants to make him understand, there would be nothing for him to go back to, no reason to leave the forest if they could not go together.

“If it’s not you, then there’s no meaning!”

Kagami doubles over him, pressing their foreheads together, a hand under Tobirama's head to pull him up closer, like a lover would. 

Kagami's curls fall over their faces; a veil for a cold world. He stares into Tobirama's eyes, another silent plea to stay. To alive, stay with him.

The Sharingan whirls to life backed by the surge of intense emotion, water lily pattern standing stark against a backdrop of glowing red. Kagami's vision blurs with the threat of new tears.

"It's for the village." Tobirama breathes, stilling from the contact.

“If you’re not there! the village, it doesn’t mean anything to me!” Kagami confesses as he grips Tobirama tighter, pressing their faces closer as Kagami closes his eyes.

“I don’t want to go on without you! I won’t! I’ll never leave you behind!" Kagami loops an arm under Tobirama's knees, while keeping the other arm against the back of his neck. Pulling him up as he stands.

"You’re too precious to me!” 

Kagami opens his eyes, narrowing them in determination as he conjures his Susanno. Channeling all his chakra into his creation, building it from a skeletal husk into a colossus. They're far above the ground like this, removed from the jaws of oblivion. The transparent navy of the Susanno suspended like a spirit over the trees, hurling towards the village.

“You...The…Mangekyo.”

Kagami can feel Tobirama go limp in his arms, head lolling to the side as his eyes roll back in their sockets. Kagami concentrates on maintaining the Susanno until they're within the village gates, only then does he let the warrior dissipate. Hashirama is there to take Tobirama into his waiting arms.

Kagami gives him up to Hashirama, waving off the frantic medical ninjas that try to assist him. He'll live, as long as Tobirama is alive he will be too. But he can feel another, more worrying, set of eyes on him.  
\----  
Kagami came into Tobirama's room much later. The sun was already burning below the horizon, the soft light feeling the room with a soft orange tint

He had the happuri in his hands, as gingerly approached the bed. Careful not to wake Tobirama, who looked so peaceful in his sleep. He set the happuri in the bed side table.

"I meant what I said, Sensei..." He whispered softly, near inaudible, drawing his fingers along the battered metal.

He left, Tobirama to sleep, without another word.  
\---  
Kagami's foot falls echoed in the hallway of the last floor of the medical wing.

The dim light cast from the long windows obscured the figure standing at the end.

But Kagami knew this familiar chakra, the inferno that was Madara.

Madara walked into a sliver of light, approaching Kagami but maintaining a respectable distance. His sharingan active, the tomoe swirled into the mangekyo. Madara lifted his chin, just a slight tilt of the head, an invitation for Kagami to activate his own.

Kagami inhaled deeply, closing his eyes before facing his clan head. Mangekyo in display, Kagami stood at attention, jaw clenched and shoulders back.

Madara was next to him before he could register the movement, side by side their shoulders barely touched, Kagami's right and Madara's left, as Madara faced the opposite direction.

"This love you have immersed yourself in. Wade carefully, lest you drown, Kagami." Madara warned the younger Uchiha.

Kagami did not flinch as he stared straight ahead, chakra crackling like lightening on the ocean.

"I have committed myself to the depths."


End file.
